EVOLUTION IN EUROPE

EVOLUTION IN EUROPE; Walesa Settles a Rail Strike, but the Workers Remain Discontented

By STEPHEN ENGELBERG, Special to The New York Times

Published: May 29, 1990

SLUPSK, Poland, May 28—
Two nights of impassioned, predawn persuasion from Lech Walesa today halted the crippling rail strike that had posed the most serious threat to date to the Government's ambitious economic reform program.

But the haggard leaders of the labor action, some of whom have been on hunger strike for more than two weeks, made it clear in interviews today that they remained on a collision course with the Solidarity-led Government, which has already ruled out their demand for a 20 percent pay increase.

The Government had enjoyed five months of social calm as it carried out a program far more austere than the plans that have stirred panic in the Soviet Union. The rail strike was the first serious fracture in this social consensus, and the Government has taken a firm line against the strikers' demands out of fear that concessions would touch off an avalanche of similar requests from other workers.

Persuaded by Walesa's Prestige

A number of rail workers made it clear that what persuaded them to suspend their strike was Mr. Walesa's prestige rather than his arguments.

''This man, who has done so much, is, if I may call him, a symbol,'' Barbara Siemienniewicz said as she bit into her first solid food in 13 days. ''The others - the local management, the regional management, my union - have failed my trust. But I believe in him.''

Mr. Walesa failed to resolve the strike on his first try. He drove from his home in Gdansk to Slupsk on Sunday evening, addressed the workers from midnight to 2 A.M. and was heard muttering, ''I wasn't here,'' as he walked out of the railroad building. He returned again early today and persuaded the workers to reopen the rails after several hours of heated discussion.

Two Views of What Was Said

Janusz Woysznis, chairman of the strike committee, said he had understood that Mr. Walesa had agreed to intercede with the Government to help the strikers win their demands. Mr. Woysznis, his eyes barely open and his face covered with several days' growth of beard, recalled hearing Mr. Walesa say that he would meet with the workers on June 13 and that ''if our demands have not been fulfilled, he will come down and go on hunger strike with us.''

In an interview in his office in Gdansk, about 80 miles from Slupsk, Mr. Walesa painted a different picture. He said he had persuaded the workers that their pay demands could be satisfied by reorganizing the ponderous state railroad, which employs 400,000 people and relies on heavy subsidies from the Government to survive.

''I think the Government is right, because this destroys the concept of the reform,'' Mr. Walesa said of the opposition to pay increases. ''When they give too much money to one group, then there are other groups waiting: the teachers, the textile workers, and soon we have returned to the point where we were before.''

The rail strike encapsulated the social tensions that surround this country's ambitious program for creating a free-market economy. Rail workers complained that while prices in the stores had soared to market levels, improvements within their state-owned enterprise that could eventually bring higher salaries seemed hopelessly bogged down in bureaucratic wrangling.

The strike also illustrated the new splits in this country's trade union movement. During the last years of Communist rule in Poland, the leadership created a Government-controlled union, the O.P.Z.Z., to rival the then-outlawed Solidarity union.

Now, it is the O.P.Z.Z. that is a constant thorn in the side of the Solidarity-dominated Government, while the Solidarity union struggles to find a way of supporting economic policies that have created hardships for individual members. Alfred Miodowicz, head of the O.P.Z.Z. and a former senior Communist, has been a vocal supporter of the rail strike.

On May 10, 10 rail workers in Slupsk went on hunger strike, and Ms. Siemienniewicz said it was a gesture of frustration by rail workers who like herself belonged to Solidarity, not the formerly official union. Within a week, the strike spread across Northern Poland and into Szczecin, the stronghold of Marian Jurczyk, a Solidarity activist who broke with Mr. Walesa in 1989 and now advocates more aggressive efforts to sweep former Communists from Government.

Mr. Walesa said he saw the hand of Mr. Miodowicz of the O.P.Z.Z., who he contended had stirred the waters ''because it is now allowed. Because Miodowicz is not afraid.'' Referring to the Communist paramilitary riot police known as Zomos, Mr. Walesa said, ''If Miodowicz knew that there were Zomos and that Zomos were going to push him - these same Zomos that he controlled before - he wouldn't do it.''

But Mr. Woysznis said the strike was strictly of local origin. ''When there is a fire,'' Mr. Woysznis said, ''everyone tries to make his own roast on it.''

photo: Barbara Siemienniewicz, a rail worker who belongs to Solidarity, abandoned a hunger strike of 13 days after the rail walkout in Poland ended yesterday. (Witold Jaroslaw Szulecki for The New York Times); map of Slupsk, Poland